


the other side of glory

by isawet



Series: play it again [3]
Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Not Canon Compliant, preship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-13
Updated: 2017-04-13
Packaged: 2018-10-18 08:40:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10613280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/isawet/pseuds/isawet
Summary: Lena had expected---chaos, maybe. Screaming and running and looting and fires in trashcans and the scream of sirens.It looks like the Rapture.(the aftermath and hurt/comfort)





	

**Author's Note:**

> Not beta-ed.

Lena watches it happen on the news. One leg crossed over the other, coffee in hand. Mercy stands at her shoulder and Lena’s laptop falls dark without her attention and they watch it on the television.

The boom is enough to shake the building, the flash blinding even though it’s so far away. They turn and watch the cloud bloom up in the distance through the window. “Christ,” Mercy says, and it’s enough of an emotion from her that Lena has to look away. 

“Send everyone home. Provide transportation for those who didn’t drive or carpool. No one comes in tomorrow.”

Mercy stares out at the sky, the darkening of it. It’s almost biblical, Lena thinks. “Alright,” Mercy says finally. She leaves with silent footsteps. 

“Wait,” Lena says, when Mercy is just at the door. “After, call a car. Contact the DEO.”

//

Lena had expected---chaos, maybe. Screaming and running and looting and fires in trashcans and the scream of sirens. 

It looks like the Rapture. Cars with open doors and the engines still running. Shops with their signs flipped to open and perfect displays and no one in them. The traffic lights are all still working and the pedestrian crossings beep and countdown in orange and the sun is shining. She cracks a window and smells it--smoke and ozone and melted plastic. 

Mercy rolls the window back up from the front seat. “Can’t be good for the lungs, Ms. Luthor,” she says quietly. The air conditioning hums and makes goosebumps rise on Lena’s skin. 

“Drop the tint,” Lena orders, and the windows shimmer clear. Destruction like this--it deserves to be seen. To tuck herself away, to mute it with tinted windows and instrumental music from the speakers… it cheapens it. No one, Lena thinks, should be so removed. Destruction like this has to be seen and heard and smelled and experienced, if anyone is going to step up and decide it will never happen again.

//

They’re stopped at the DEO perimeter. Mercy parks the car. “Stay here.” She cracks the door open. 

“Tell them I walk the site or the L-Corp aid package is pulled.”

Mercy pauses. She sounds more surprised than judgmental. “You’re sure?”

Lena thinks she can see a figure standing at the edge of the crater, just on the horizon, the flutter of a dusty cape. “Am I a Luthor or aren’t I?”

//

The DEO has already inlaid rough steps up the edge of ground zero, metal grate and sandbags, and Lena’s feet thump echoey on them as she climbs. 

Supergirl turns. “Lena.”

“Supergirl.”

They stand on the edge of the platform and look down--the bustle of agents in white and yellow hazmat suits and the thick black rubber gloves and boots. There’s blood in the left nostril of Supergirl’s nose and Lena wants to feel it between her fingers and scrape it on a slide and watch her cells dance under a microscope. “Are you injured?”

Supergirl makes a dismissive gesture. There’s green blood mixed with gravel and dirt in her hair, streaking it grey and making her look ten years older, matching the exhausted lines in her face and the ginger way she’s favouring her right side. “I heal fast.” She casts Lena a quick searching look sideways. “Those don’t match your outfit.”

Lena looks down at her boots. “Mercy made me change so I wouldn’t break an ankle.” She pauses, thoughtful. “I do believe my mother could have managed it. 

Supergirl almost smiles. She exhales instead, her shoulders slumped. “I don’t want to fly back,” she admits, low and whispered. Lena thinks it’s more of an image than Superman’s perfect hair and stoic face as he streaked through the sky, this girl covered in debris and crumpling under the weight of everything, her cape ripped and hanging crooked. _Show me a hero_ Lena thinks, and shakes her mind clear. 

“Come to L-Corp,” she offers instead, and holds out her hand.

Supergirl hesitates. “I need to--there’s…” she trails off. The dust cloud is too thick here to let the sun through and Lena is half-afraid she’ll wilt right there, slide down into the crater and die next to the thing she’s just defeated. 

“It can wait,” she says simply, and Supergirl takes her hand. Grit on her skin and the tingle Lena’s always felt when they’ve touched.

//

It’s an odd visual, Supergirl in her uniform in the back of Lena’s SUV. Mercy doesn’t raise an eyebrow, but she does pass back a bottle of water, and then a second when Supergirl drains the first in just seconds. “The back entrance, I think,” Lena says, even though the building should be long empty by the time we get back. 

Mercy makes a noise in acknowledgment and Lena reaches for the button to tint the windows. Supergirl’s fingers are on her wrist and she never saw them move, not even a blur. She wonders how much of herself Supergirl tamps down to seem more human and how much it took to get her to forego it. 

“No,” Supergirl says. “I need to see.”

Lena sits back.

They drive through the ghost town of National City, the police walking the streets the only movement. “Your sister,” Lena inquires.

“She’s alright.” Supergirl doesn’t elaborate and Lena accepts the silent request not to push.

//

The elevators are down and the emergency lights glow eerily and they climb the stairs slowly, resting between floors until they reach the top, where Lena’s personal backup generator has kept the lights on and the keypads working. Lena lets them into her offices and tells Mercy to find some food.

Supergirl stands in the middle of her office. The tracks of her boots go from the doorway forwards, filthy and dragging.

Lena shuts the doors and stands in front of her. She reaches out to undo the firm clasp of the cape and Supergirl’s eyes snap to her and she freezes. Supergirl’s eyes are glowing, very faintly, and her body is unnaturally still and she has never looked so alien. Lena feels very small, suddenly. Human and breakable and an ant looking up at a shoe. “Kara,” she says, and swallows.

The light fades away and Supergirl blinks and her knees buckle before she catches herself. Lena undoes the cape and lets it fall to the floor in a puddle. Takes Kara by the elbow and guides her into Lena’s personal bathroom. Kara blinks. “There’s a shower in here.”

“Yes,” Lena agrees. She touches the high collar on the back of Supergirl’s suit, the flex of the almost-rubber and her finger between it and the knob of Kara’s spine. “Is there a zip?”

Kara blinks twice. Her lips twitch. “I have to keep some secrets, don’t I?”

Lena arches an eyebrow. “If you insist.” She leaves, closing the door behind her.

Mercy is holding a bag of takeout in each hand. “I left cash.” She places it on Lena’s desk. Ducks out for a moment and returns with a black duffel. “Clothes.”

“Thank you.”

“Hm,” Mercy says, a little bit of judgment coming through. Lena looks straight at her until Mercy looks away. Leaves with a thump of the double doors.

Kara comes out of the bathroom in a towel. Her shoulders and arms and feet are clean, but her face is streaked and her hair grimy. “My ribs,” she explains, when she sees Lena looking. She sniffs the air. “Chinese?”

“Yes.” Lena hesitates. She considers. She offers her hand. “Let me?”

Kara looks at her. “Are you sure that’s what you want to do?” She looks out the window. “I did that. I did all of that.”

“You did.” Lena doesn’t drop her hand. 

Kara’s gaze has gone faintly distant. “They say I could split an atom. I can feel them, you know. They buzz.”

Lex built a gun that could kill Superman once. Lena’s looked at the blueprints and seen the prototypes. He’d called it a god-killer.

“Kara,” Lena calls, and Kara comes back to earth.

//

Lena washes Kara’s hair in her desk chair. The wheels slip in the suds and the water and her clothes have been dampened all to ruin but she slides her fingers through it and uses half a bottle of shampoo and wipes at Kara’s face with a cloth until she’s clean again. “I have a sunlamp,” she admits. “In my workshop. I could--?”

“No.” Kara closes her eyes and tips her head into Lena’s fingers. “I think I need to feel it.”

“Martyrdom has always been more of your cousin’s show than yours,” Lena notes, carefully neutral.

“And what do you know about my cousin?” Kara asks, dark edged and protective.

Lena rinses the suds off her hands and applies conditioner. “I know men cast large shadows.”

Kara is quiet for a moment. “I heal quickly. I don’t feel pain like you do. If I’m not careful I’m scared I’ll forget. It’ll make me callous.”

Lena smiles. “I don’t know if I’ve ever met anyone less callous than you, Kara Danvers.” It makes Kara smile, just a little bit, just the littlest twitch. 

Lena washes Kara’s hair and picks the stones out and leaves it soft and clean in her wake and if she scrapes a little bit of that alien gunk onto the plastic slide in her pocket, that’s between her and the shadow of her brother.

//

Kara stands, damp and tousled and clean, in a sunbeam, face tilted into it. She’s wearing sweats with the L-Corp logo and she lets Lena guide her gently the the sofa.

She eats three styrofoam containers full of noodles before she slows down. Lena picks at a box of fried rice and watches Kara set aside her chopsticks and slide down onto the couch. She sets aside the food and pulls a blanket up over her. Settles Kara’s feet in her own lap and curls her fingers around Kara’s bare ankles. Her bones feel deceptively delicate and her toes are painted coral. 

“You’re a good friend,” Kara says, quiet. “Thank you.”

Lena struggles with something to say to ease the tension in Kara’s face and the heaviness of her shoulders. “You were a hero today,” she tries, and almost winces at herself.

Kara stares at the ceiling. “The real heroes,” she says, slow like she’s thinking it out as she goes alone, “are the ones who go in without bulletproof skin.”

Lena has lived her whole life wanting to be more than she was. More than what her mother wanted and more than what her brother turned out to be. She wants to save the world from itself and she wants her mother to admit she’s proud of her. She wants to take a kryptonite scalpel to Supergirl’s skin and look at the muscle flex underneath and she wants to make her lead armor to save her from people like Luthors. She thinks maybe she wants to kiss her and tell her Kara Danvers was a hero long before Supergirl was. 

She waits so long that Kara’s breathing evens out, the sleep of the bone weary. “Kara Danvers,” she murmurs to herself. She feels Kara’s pulse against her fingers, the warmth of her radiating out, trying to heat the universe with the force of her body. “Because it worked out so very well the last time an El and a Luthor tried to be friends.”

**Author's Note:**

> I really want to write more supercorp, I'm just figuring out what I want that to be. In the meantime, I'd love to know how my characterization feels so I can improve. 
> 
> Let me know what you think and catch me on tumblr @ sunspill


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